‘She wasn’t at the centre of everything, but she was at least part of it, and she was doing so well,’ Melanie’s mother was quoted as saying in the report. What happened next, no one can really explain. She turned her back on the group and went her own way. She retreated into herself again and started another of her numerous missions to lose weight. Questioning and probing her hadn’t helped; it never had. One of the mother’s friends had reported seeing Melanie with a man old enough to be her father. They had apparently been strolling through the Christmas market in Hellbrunn, their arms wrapped around each other, oblivious to the rest of the world.
Melanie’s mother had been torn back and forth between happiness and worry. Her child was in love and happy – but hadn’t thought to introduce or even mention the man to her parents. She stormed out of their regular Sunday lunches any time they tentatively tried to bring the conversation around to him.
Six months later came the breakdown. Frau Dalamasso received the call at ten in the morning, right before the start of the summer holidays. They told her that Melanie had suddenly started screaming during orchestral rehearsals for an upcoming concert, and that she had been inconsolable ever since. When her mother arrived, the ambulance was already there, and Melanie had been sedated by the doctor.
‘She’s been in a completely different world ever since. She hardly speaks any more, and if she does then only sentence fragments that don’t make any sense. The doctors suspect she’s suffered from a kind of autism since birth, and that it’s only now reached its full force,’ concluded the father.
Why would the Owner want to kill someone like Melanie Dalamasso?
‘…speak to the woman anyway.’ Beatrice only heard the last half-sentence of Hoffmann’s objection. ‘Kossar could do it. He’s a psychiatrist, he knows how to handle sick people.’
‘He’s a forensic psychiatrist,’ objected Florin. ‘I don’t think Melanie Dalamasso’s doctors would take too kindly to that. I suggest we leave it for now and instead concentrate on trying to protect Melanie. So far our conversations with the Owner’s targets have brought us either very little or nothing.’ Florin interlaced his fingers and nodded briefly at the photos spread out in front of them on the conference table. ‘I’ve shown the parents the pictures of the other victims, from Papenberg to Estermann. There was no sign of recognition in their faces at all. In order to show the girl the pictures we’d need the approval of her doctors, but even if we get that, we may do considerable damage without accomplishing anything from it. Melanie hasn’t spoken in five years, and that’s not going to change just because we show her a few pictures. So as long as she can’t tell us what she knows, or what she’s thinking…’ He shrugged his shoulders.
A torn woman. Back in her office, leaning over the desk, Beatrice laid out the photos of the victims in front of her, adding a new one: Melanie Dalamasso. Her dark hair framed a round face. Heavy-lidded brown eyes, a nose that tilted slightly upwards. A pretty mouth, the contours of which were out of focus, making it look a little lopsided.
Papenberg. Liebscher. Beil. Sigart. Estermann. Dalamasso. An unsolvable puzzle. With a few brief hand movements, Beatrice shifted the photos around, letting the new order take effect. Papenberg was in the middle now, Beil next to Dalamasso, Estermann on the outside right, Liebscher above him. Sigart’s photo was a little askew, the upper right-hand corner of his photo touching the corner of Papenberg’s mouth.
Beatrice laid the photo of the last message down. The Owner, expressing himself through Papenberg’s hand.
Something connects you all, Beatrice thought. A puzzle behind the puzzles.
But the photos stayed silent. Just like the dead.
Chapter 6
N47º 28.813 E013º 10.983
There was no doubt about Dalamasso’s birth year – 1985 – but there was about the accuracy of the coordinates. The members of the team found themselves right by the Bundesstrasse again, just a few kilometres away from the bridge where they had found Rudolf Estermann’s body. A narrow fork in the road led past detached houses, up an incline, then tailed off approximately a kilometre into the forest.
‘He can’t have hidden anything here.’ Drasche was stalking up and down with the GPS device in his hand. ‘This is a residential area. Unless he buried the body parts in someone’s front garden.’
‘Or perhaps he didn’t keep exactly to the coordinates.’ Squinting, Beatrice turned around slowly on the spot. The surrounding area had a number of potential hiding places – at distances of roughly fifteen, twenty and fifty metres there were trees (fucking trees, she thought to herself), crash barriers and an area of greenery. But there, right on the spot they had calculated, there was nothing but the road and a traffic sign limiting the speed to thirty kilometres an hour.
They must have made a mistake. The Owner had always been very precise. ‘Where’s the second GPS device?’
Stefan had taken the day off, on Florin’s strict advice. ‘Your eyes are so red they’re competing with your hair,’ he had commented, prescribing him a twenty-four-hour break.
Their younger colleague had given in with a mixture of reluctance and relief, pressed his navigation device into Florin’s hand and set off home – by bus rather than car, as he was worried about falling asleep at the wheel. But even Stefan’s Garmin, tried and tested on so many caches, still came up with the same answer as Drasche’s mobile software.
With the last coordinates, it had been the right place but the wrong time. They’d got there before the Owner had dumped Estermann’s body. Would he do the same thing again?
Beatrice tried to tune into the surroundings, looking from the wet asphalt up to the sky. Until just now, thin threads of rain had woven a grey cloth across the landscape. Now the clouds were slowly starting to break apart.
Dalamasso is the solution to the new puzzle, she thought. But it was virtually impossible that the Owner could kidnap her, kill her and dump her here. Two armed guards were keeping an eye on her around the clock, both in the day clinic and at home. When Melanie first noticed them she had burst into tears, a wordless howl. After that, at her mother’s request, they had relinquished uniforms for plain clothes and kept their distance. Now Melanie just stared right through them, as if they were invisible.
The sun came out, making the road glisten. Beatrice shielded her eyes with her hand, not having reckoned on needing sunglasses. Something was blinding her. A round, reflective sticker on the traffic sign, placed right in the middle of the zero, beside to three. Next to it, someone had scrawled ‘Don’t eat animals’ with a black marker.
‘Maybe we’ve thwarted his plans this time.’ There wasn’t much hope in Florin’s voice, but Beatrice nodded all the same.
‘Yes. Maybe he thought we’d take longer to find Melanie Dalamasso, or didn’t predict that we’d put her under police protection.’ But she didn’t believe that one bit. The Owner must know that they wouldn’t – couldn’t – let the young woman out of their sight for a second. They should have acted sooner and convinced Sigart of the necessity of accepting police protection.
‘Search everything within a hundred-metre radius,’ Florin ordered. ‘We’re keeping a lookout for containers, paper, anything that could be a message. It’s possible that it’s very well disguised.’ Three officers from the dog team set off obediently with their animals. If there were any body parts hidden around, they would find them.